


Or Highwater

by buttpatrol



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: A coda, Building new things, Multi, Not Beta Read, Some bittersweet, Some cute, and watching old things decay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-17
Updated: 2017-02-17
Packaged: 2018-09-25 02:49:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9799499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buttpatrol/pseuds/buttpatrol
Summary: Life in The City of First Light goes on.





	

There is a school for dancing in Chrysanthemum Parish. Chrysanthemum is not the fashionable neighbourhood it used to be. The shadow the Tower casts is long, obscures the sun well into the afternoon. There is no park anymore.

But there is still a school of dancing and dueling. There is still a basement, bloated with all the knickknacks and knowledge of the city that it can hold. Under Samot’s rule the restriction on knowledge had loosened, and the value of a basement full of crop records, blueprints, and old books had lessened to where it seems less like library and more just a hoarded pile of peculiar things, ephemera crammed in boxes and drawers and under couches.

This was fine with the new members of the Six. Miss Salary’s days of information brokering are over, and Caroline Fairplay was never much into archiving and collecting anyway.

Money. Money never loses its shine though.

Caroline teaches dance upstairs, and Miss Salary teaches dueling downstairs. They crash fabulous parties, and race through Helliantes at night evading the guards and the Golden Lance. Caroline winks at  Lance Corporal Siege Colburn, as she grabs Miss Salary’s hand and then they disappear off a balcony into the shadows.

Tonight, Miss Salary stretches out on battered red settee while Caroline sits on the floor sorting the night's take into piles of coins. They pass a bottle of a bitter citrusy wine back and forth between them.

It’s been a quiet year, without the Six.

Or at least without the four that made up the original Six.

Peg and Zac Trac are still here, doing odd jobs and helping them fence their goods. Frank and Beans are still here, fatter and older, but still good boys. Miss Salary swears she isn’t slipping them extra treats, but Caroline knows when she is lying. It’s a trick she picked up from her teacher. Shoot. Her  _ teachers. _

Miss Salary asked her once, on a night like this one, what it was like to lose a twin.

“Like losing a sister.”

And it was true. Carolyn had been her own person, with her own life, worries, and interests (and apparently, her own crime spree). The one thing they had in common was a love of dance.

She knows what Miss Salary  _ is _ asking though, what she is trying to figure out. The Hitchcock’s had seemed to be one soul cut in twain, and shared between two bodies, and even when Edmund had concealed his hurts and anxieties, they seemed to still be reflected in his twin, mirrored and flipped but equally painful. Maybe they had become so successful at tricking people into believing that they were one person that they had somehow even fooled themselves.

She hoped they had found each other each other again. Somewhere out there in the West where the sun sets. 

* * *

 

Lilith jimmies the window of County’s small dusty living space open, and pokes her head inside. 

“I _have_ a door,” he says mildly, looking up from his soup.

She doesn’t answer, just laughs. The warm wind, the smell of the iron works and of the sea blow in through the now open window.

“We are going for a walk,” she informs him, but there is a gentleness to her voice. This has been part of an ongoing campaign to make sure he doesn’t spend his days locked in his claustrophobic room feeling like a nest of rats are hollowing him out from inside. He doesn’t sleep much anymore. Eats only simple soup and bread and the odd orange Hazel presses into his hands as he goes by. He punches pictures of the Church of Samot out of wood for twelve hours and goes home and stares at the cracks in the wall.

“We are going for a walk,” she repeats, more forcefully, “Put your shoes on.”

It does feel good to be outside. The sun is just setting and between the factories you can catch glimpses of the long evening light catching on water and lava, gold and blue, like strokes in a painting. They walk through the narrow streets, crowded with Marieldans.

If Lilith had of  _ just _ been an Orc, people might have whispered and pointed. Instead they just  _ stared _ , looking at brown freckles on laurel green skin, elf ears tucked behind strange horns, and they tried to make sense of her. If he as a Black Slack, son of a refugee, was an ‘other’ and dangerous, at least he was identifiable, easily categorized, easily ignored.

If it bothers her, she doesn’t show it. 

County looks at her collar that matches his own, as they stand on the shores of Emberboro. She looks at him uncertainly, trying to gage whether he feels better.    

He is very tired. But he's glad he is not alone.

He puts his hand in hers, as they watch the waves crash on the shore.

“I have a plan,” she whispers.

* * *

Elsewhere, Charter Castille watches the same sunset from window of the tomb. This tower pins the city in place like a dead butterfly. One of the mages use to collect insects like that, she thinks, but she can’t remember who. She has lived two lives, and both of them have felt tediously long these days.

She turns away from the window, towards what used to be Maelgywn.

* * *

 

 

 

 

The Tea Witch stays open, and so does Walligan. Buildings are demolished and rebuilt and renovated around them to match the changing tastes of the elite.

There is a new God in town, and suddenly life is moving  very fast. People are learning more, making more things themselves. The God of all the old, static, divinely invented artifacts is dead. It’s a bad time for selling antiques.

Still, things need to be notarized. Things always need to be notarized.

It’s peaceful and orderly, this close to Samot’s church. Everyone closes their shops at the same time, and the street was very tidy, and attractive.

“This what I wanted,” he reassures himself, reorganizing a collection of old Canopy Row earthenware for the third time that week.

* * *

 

 

Zac Trac and Peg and Miss Salary and Caroline all go out for brunch. Peg has been developing odd spots and sores recently, and leans on Zac Trac for support. Caroline and Miss Salary joke loudly, drink a little too much orange liquor, trying to keep the mood light.

Caroline tries to teach Miss Salary to dance. Caroline trying to keep count to the rhythm as Miss Salary curses and stumbles her way through a waltz. Caroline leads, as they turn, circling around couches and crates, and rugs in the little sub-basement until, they both  give up flop on the floor. Tired and laughing, heads bumping and limbs tangling. They lay there a while, listening to the dry thunder roll the strait approaching the island, and Caroline presses a kiss to Miss Salary's  cheek.

* * *

 

Hazel sells oranges by the factory. She does pretty well.

A lady in a long dress and wide brimmed hat buys one every day on her way to the Tower. When Hazel heads east she thinks on the lady with the hat, and hopes that she found someone else who would sell her good oranges.

* * *

 

Walligan invites people over every High Sun day. Not to the marketplace, just to his house. Tisk always comes, as does Juno. Sometimes Danny or Clipper or Hazel stop by. Once even Clariet showed up for ten minutes. Lilith and County send his invitations back with impolite message written on them

Walligan never sees Remembrance Cobb again. “We are surrounded by sea too hot to swim in and he managed a swimming pool,” he says offhandedly to Tisk. “A swimming pool in a Marielda that was still being reconfigured weekly.”

Tisk nods politely, hands clasped around a teacup too big for him.

* * *

 

Samot and Aubrey build greenhouses and irrigation beds, and all the little things that might bring more variety to food in the City of First Light. The world feels like it was getting bigger, and the other cities that they had once traded with seemed more distant and unfriendly.

Still Samot grins as he throws Aubrey the first ripe apple, “Good work.”

* * *

 

Siege Colburn protects his Parish. Checks up on the new Six. Tags along with Aubrey some days, and keeps Castille company other days. Looks for the faces of the twins in the crowd. He always means to travel to the mainland to have a look for them, but somehow those plans keep getting pushed back.

Maybe next year.

* * *

 

It’s the hottest summer in recent memory. Given that they live on a semi-tropical island surrounding by a sea of steaming water and molten rock, this is impressive. A stifling, wet heat that hangs heavy over the island, driving people indoors to the shade.

How can people, gods and shadowy groups, be so worried about this Heat and the Dark. How can it be worse than the desperation, the edge of the knife, that is living in fucking Iris Parish in the summer.

It’s both the best and worst weather for revolution. Never quite reaching a boiling point, nor ever cooling off as the long hours, and cramped housing, and intolerable conditions grind everyone down bit by bit.

When County Sansoliel was twenty years old, the revolution had happened like an eruption, like a wave that crashed over the streets of Marielda, blood running down the cobblestone as the Black Slacks rose up. Gods dying, monsters crashing through the city walls, chaos and violence in the hope tomorrow will be different.

It’s different now but change is something they have to keep working at. Every step forward, brings two new complications. He and Lilith spend nights by candlelight drawing plans, and talking to factory workers. Running  and marching through the streets at night, with bricks and sticks, smashing windows.

They figure out how to break their collars.

That night they sit nervously beside each other waiting for the sky to fall, waiting for Samot to strike them down, but it never comes.

And in the shortest night of the year, in those small hours of the dark they fall into each other. She kisses a circle around his neck and he feels alive for the first time in a while.

* * *

 

Castille can’t stand to look at the Knife in the Dark anymore. She lets it be traded away, buried in a pile of other weapons, heading west to some island on the other side of the world.

It’s mate, Samothes golden sword stays a while longer. Samot never bringing himself to part with it.  When Aubrey, after living a long and productive life dies of old age, Samot leaves the Tower in the care of Charter Castille. He brings the sword northeast, towards  the snow and the foot hills, to where a new tower reaches high towards the sky. He will see the City of First Light again, someday. He turns his back to the sun as it sets on Marielda, behind the now dormant volcano, and starts walking.

 


End file.
